Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
For reasons long lost in our house’s history, two of the zone drain valves on the furnace apparently had something heavy fall on them from a great height:
Furnace zone drain valve – bashed knob
I was certain those knobs were made of brittle pot metal and would snap when I tried to un-bend them.
My weight bench being next to the furnace, I had plenty of opportunities to contemplate conjuring a 3D printed knob similar to the dumbbell nuts, but with the undamaged central part of the metal knob engaging the valve stem to avoid thermoplastic shapes around hot metal.
One can, of course, buy replacement knobs, but where’s the fun in that?
Expecting to cut most of the knob away, I applied needle-nose pliers to the rim and, mirabile dictu, not only did it not immediately snap, I managed to un-bend it into a reasonable facsimile of its original shape.
It wasn’t just beginner’s luck, because I did it again:
Furnace zone drain valve – unbent knobs
Both of those knobs have obvious fractures and aren’t the prettiest things you’ll ever see, but they don’t get a lot of use. I can say, without fear of contradiction, they’re in fine shape.
Apparently we were the first people through a self-checkout lane one morning, because a present emerged before our receipt:
Grocery NCR K5xx printer – boot report
I don’t know whether a K5xx printer runs a descendant of PC-DOS or NCR’s firmware just uses the DOS code page numbers, but it’s been a long time since I had to know any of them.
As Sun Tzu said, “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”
Some weeks ago Mary heard a loud bang just as the lights went out. Central Hudson crews arrived shortly thereafter and began examining the transformer serving the group of houses around us. I wandered over to ask questions and learned the bang came from a high-voltage fuse atop a pole 800 feet from our house.
With all the power cables underground, the crews were locating the transformer just upstream of the problem, with the intent of disconnecting it and restoring power to everybody else. That took a few hours for our service, but folks up the hill remained in the dark maybe six more hours.
The paint on the transformer enclosures has been weathering for many decades, but I spotted this one up the hill that looks different from all the rest:
Scorched utility transformer housing
The scorched half of the enclosure pivots upward to reveal the high-voltage disconnect switch, fuses, and low-voltage connections. This one is across the street from our house:
Neighborhood distribution transformer
I think something went badly wrong in there and the transformer overheated to the point of insulation failure, whereupon the short circuit blew the HV fuse half a mile away down the hill.
Our Google Pixel 6a phones qualify for their “Battery Performance Program”, which involves severely limiting the battery charge and discharge levels to avoid “potential battery overheating”. After the mandatory capacity limit kicked in, I must now let the phone suck a socket by the middle of the afternoon so that it will survive until bedtime; if I had a more active lifestyle, it’d be flat dead by noon.
My options under the Program are thus:
Have the battery replaced by the local iFixit shop, without a warranty covering “Whoops, broke your phone. Too bad, so sad.”
Get a $100 check
Get $150 off a new phone at The Google Store
Even though I do not have a deep emotional attachment to the 6a, the first option is obviously a bad deal. Somewhat against my better judgement, I opted to take the $150 discount on a shiny new Pixel 10a.
Redeeming the $150 from the Battery Program involves (their words + my bullets & emphasis):
visit store.google.com,
add the desired item(s) to the cart,
then enter discount code during checkout for an instant $150 discount on your purchase.
Promotional code is for one-time use only with no residual balance;
can be combined with other offers
So I set up an order with the cart looking like this:
Pixel 10a order form
The alert reader will note the inability to enter the “discount code” associated with the Battery Program.
Two hours of chat-typing with Google Customer Support over the course of two days established the hard fact that “can be combined with other offers” does not apply in this case, because the $100 discount precludes any additional offers.
6:16:15 PM Ed Nisley: There is no way to add a second discount code.
6:16:59 PM Ed Nisley: So I cannot add the $150 battery code to the order
6:19:38 PM Ed Nisley: But quoting the email with the battery code: "can be combined with other offers"
6:20:01 PM Ed Nisley: How do I include the battery code in this order?
6:21:17 PM Stella: Got it , let me check with my resources.
6:22:47 PM Stella: I have checked the details with my team, and unfortunately, you cannot apply two promo codes at the same time. You may use only one code per order. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
6:24:57 PM Ed Nisley: So Google saying the battery code can be combined with the other offers is a lie?
6:26:46 PM Stella: I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.
6:27:08 PM Ed Nisley: It's not an inconvenience, it's $150 I'm not getting.
6:27:28 PM Ed Nisley: Despite having it be Google's fault in the first place for the bad batteries.
6:28:14 PM Stella: I understand your point. While the Pixel 6a promo code can be combined with ongoing store promotions, it cannot be used in conjunction with another promo code. Per our policy, two promo codes cannot be combined for a single order. I hope you understand.
6:28:47 PM Ed Nisley: This is contradictory: "can be combined with ongoing store promotions, it cannot be used in conjunction with another promo code"
6:29:09 PM Ed Nisley: If it can't be combined with another promo code, how can it be combined with ongoing store promotions?
6:29:47 PM Stella: I understand your point here.
6:29:53 PM Stella: I do understand that the provided resolution doesn't meet your expectations. But, please understand that I cannot go beyond the system restrictions.
Thus whittling the $150 battery discount down to $50, because I can have either $100 or $150, but not both.
There is obviously no recourse. I will definitely take the cash-in-hand $100 when we do this dance with Mary’s phone.
Google doesn’t care, because they’re bigger than the phone company ever was and they know it.
Vassar College sent a plow along the walking path linking the campus with the faculty enclave on Old Silvermine Place, but the clearance between the lamp pole and the boulder blocking the entrance wasn’t quite adequate.
Some days later, the light fixture was missing and the power cable sported three cheerful wire nuts:
Damaged pole – wire nuts
Another pole has been lying flat on the ground for (at least) the last two years and I’ve always wondered if its wires (within easy reach) were live under their nuts. Knowing the lamp power is 277 VAC from a 480 VAC three-phase service, I’m disinclined to find out.
The deer managed to unfurl enough tongue to reach over the edge, but the birds leave very few intact seeds and I suspect the result was just a mouthful of dry hulls.
The woods beyond that large tree is Vassar College territory, with its conspicuous lack of undergrowth due to the overly large deer population eating essentially everything. Vassar has an annual deer cull in the Preserve, but plenty of deer remain in the surrounding area and it’s not unusual to see six deer browsing in our yard.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 